Northern Roots opens UK's largest urban eco-park — SkimNews
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- Northern Roots has developed a 65-hectare site in Oldham over five years — land that once held two cotton mills, two coalmines, an industrial railway and later a 24-hectare tip — into what the charity describes as the UK's largest urban farm and eco-park.
- The new facility opens to the public on 19 September, offering a café, shop, production kitchen, performance space, forestry skills centre, outdoor play areas and an urban farm, run in partnership with Oldham council.
- The Natural Health Service, commissioned through Northern Roots by NHS England and launched in 2023 as a pilot at Hill Top GP surgery in Fitton Hill, focuses on intentional connection with nature rather than exercise or gardening; independent NHS research published in 2025 found participants improved wellbeing by an average of 8.15 points on the Short Warwick-Edinburgh scale and generated £4,940 in social value per participant.
- Faiza Awan and Louise Gibbs, both locals who joined as community champions, now serve as Natural Health Service guardians, part of a 'participation pathway' design intended to keep people engaged once they reach the site.
- Founder Anna da Silva is lobbying for urban green space to be treated as critical infrastructure on par with hospitals and schools, pressing commissioners to invest in these sites the same way.
- Northern Roots is targeting 300,000 visitors a year by 2030, alongside hundreds of Natural Health Service social prescriptions and new employment and training roles.
Why it matters: The 8.15-point wellbeing improvement and £4,940-per-participant social value figure from NHS-published research give NHS England and local commissioners hard numbers to weigh when funding future green-health pilots, while giving da Silva empirical ammunition for treating post-industrial land as healthcare infrastructure rather than a maintenance burden.
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